When testing for the presence of bacterial capable of causing food poisoning such as Escherichia coli, Bacillus dysentericus, or Salmonella, a method called cultivation is typically used. Cultivation entails spreading a portion of collected stool over an agar medium, cultivating the sample, and testing for the presence or absence of bacterial colony formation so as to assess whether target bacteria are contained in the stool.
Ordinarily, stool serving as a specimen is collected using a special stick at the home of each individual undergoing the test, and the entire stick is housed in a prescribed container (for example, see Patent Literature 1). The stick for collecting stool has a shape that facilitates the collection of stool and facilitates application to an agar medium. Because it is necessary to keep the bacteria contained in the collected stool alive, a gel-like medium is provided inside the container housing the stick.
In recent years, testing for bacteria capable of causing food poisoning is transitioning to genetic testing methods using PCR technology instead of cultivation. Examinations based on stool tests are performed for the purpose of not only establishing a definite diagnosis of infections but also rapidly screening uninfected people.
Some testing organizations that perform screening process over 10,000 specimens per day. When screening large numbers of specimens, a method of collecting a plurality (for example, 50) of specimens and simultaneously performing PCR reaction processing while taking advantage of the characteristics of PCR, which enables highly sensitive detection, so as to reduce the number of PCR reaction processes and to perform rapid detection is used. When a positive specimen emerges, the specimen is retested by cultivation in order to confirm whether the bacteria are alive.